Editing Rizzuto crime family (section)

==Growth and de facto independence==
Under Vito Rizzuto, the Montreal organization became a powerful coalition linking Sicilian Mafia figures, local Italian-Canadian networks and non-Italian partners. Its operations included drug importation, money laundering, illegal gambling, extortion and influence in construction and contracting.

The family operated through alliances rather than exercising simple command over every organized-crime group in Quebec. Cooperation with motorcycle gangs, Irish-Canadian organizations, Colombian and Mexican traffickers or Sicilian groups did not make those organizations subsidiaries.

United States prosecutors later distinguished the Rizzuto and Bonanno families in the same cases. A case involving Canadian trafficker Jimmy Cournoyer described a Montreal-based drug organization affiliated with the “Rizutto and Bonanno crime families,” the Hells Angels and the Sinaloa Cartel.<ref name="Cournoyer">[https://www.justice.gov/usao-edny/pr/canadian-drug-kingpin-ties-rizutto-and-bonanno-crime-families-hells-angels-and-mexican “Canadian Drug Kingpin with Ties to the Rizzuto and Bonanno Crime Families Sentenced”], United States Attorney's Office, Eastern District of New York.</ref> The federal release misspells the name “Rizutto”; the article uses the correct spelling “Rizzuto.”

That separate naming supports operational distinction by the 2010s. It does not prove a formal Commission-approved declaration of independence.